Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told AT&T Inc. and other telecommunications companies they must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes.

In a letter posted on the SEC website, the agency asserted that net neutrality -- the idea that Internet service providers must treat traffic equally -- has become a “significant policy consideration” and can no longer be excluded from shareholder ballots. AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. must now grant shareholder requests for votes this year on resolutions that would support net neutrality.

“In view of the sustained public debate over the last several years concerning net neutrality and the Internet and the increasing recognition that the issue raises significant policy considerations, we do not believe that AT&T may omit the proposal from its proxy materials,” the SEC said in the Feb. 10 letter.

The shareholder resolution would recommend each company “publicly commit to operate its wireless broadband network consistent with network neutrality principles,” the letter said. The companies should not discriminate based on the “source, ownership or destination” of data sent over their wireless infrastructure.

“It allows shareholders to come to the table for the first time on an issue that we think is really of preeminent importance,” said Farnum Brown, an investment strategist at Boston-based Trillium Asset Management LLC, which led the multiyear effort of shareholder groups. “Persistence pays, I guess is the moral of the story.”

FCC Regulation

The Democrat-led Federal Communications Commission approved a regulation in 2010 that bars land-line Internet-service providers from blocking or slowing online content sent to homes and businesses, while still allowing mobile-phone companies to put limits on Internet traffic. Verizon sued the FCC in federal court, arguing the regulator lacks authority to regulate how companies provide Internet service.

Trillium, with the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Inc. and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, had been seeking access to company ballots for at least four years.

Beastie Boys

Trillium is representing three individual AT&T investors -- Michael Diamond, better known as Mike D of the hip-hop band Beastie Boys; his wife Tamra Davis, director of films including “Billy Madison” and “Half Baked”; and John P. Silva, of Silva Artist Management, which represents recording artists Foo Fighters and Beck.

AT&T argued the proposal “would directly interfere with its network management practices and seriously impair its ability to provide wireless broadband service to its customers,” David B. Harms, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, wrote in a letter to the SEC on behalf of the company. Mike Balmoris, a company spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the response.

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance had found in past years that similar net-neutrality proposals fell under the category of day-to-day business operations and that companies could exclude them from shareholder voting. With the agency changing its position, the previous exclusion no longer applies.

“Net neutrality is the free speech issue of our time and today’s decision by the SEC was a big win in the fight to maintain a free and open Internet,” Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement. Franken had co-written a Jan. 31 letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro with four other senators, urging the commission to deny the companies’ exclusion requests.

Reviewing Next Steps

“We received word last week that the SEC declined,” said John B. Taylor, a spokesman for Sprint, in an e-mail. “We understand other companies in our industry received similar guidance. Sprint is reviewing the information received from the SEC and potential next steps.”

Bob Varettoni, a spokesman for New York-based Verizon, declined to comment. His company had argued that this latest shareholder proposal didn’t offer “any new information that would indicate that ‘net neutrality’ has emerged as a consistent topic of widespread public debate,” according to a Dec. 22 letter to the SEC from Mary Louise Weber, an assistant general counsel at Verizon.

Companies whose requests are declined by the SEC can challenge the regulator’s findings in court.

As state governments wrestle with massive budget shortfalls, a Wall Street giant is offering a solution: cash in exchange for state property. Prisons, to be exact.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Huffington Post.

The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems.

Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. The company capitalized on the expansion of state prison systems in the '80s and '90s at the height of the so-called 'war on drugs,' contracting with state governments to build or manage new prisons to house an influx of drug offenders. During the past 10 years, it has found new opportunity in the business of locking up undocumented immigrants, as the federal government has contracted with private companies in an aggressive immigrant-detention campaign.

And Corrections Corporation's offer of $250 million toward purchasing existing state prisons is yet another avenue for potential growth. The company has billed the "corrections investment initiative" as a convenient option for states in need of fresh revenue streams: The state benefits from a one-time infusion of cash, while the prison corporation wins a new long-term contract. In addition, supporters of prison privatization have argued that states can achieve cost savings through outsourcing, as prison corporations give fewer benefits to employees.

"We believe this comes at a timely and helpful juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the purchase-and-manage model," reads the letter from Harley Lappin, CCA's chief corrections officer, who was a former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons......

plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full,

HAW HAW HAW

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full,

HAW HAW HAW

Holy fucking hell.

We have conviction quotas, established by contract.

How 21st Century is THAT?

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Oh, I disagree. This is all done for you. To keep you SAFE. You DO want to be SAFE, don't you?

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

This article was perfect timing, as I was just printing out articles on voter ID laws and immigration laws to take to school, so I just went ahead and printed this out as well. They are all linked by ALEC.

Lots of people think there isn't a conspiracy of corporations to take over government.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

Regardless of the purpose of for-profit prisons, or prisons in general, two systematic problems come to mind that only make the imprisonment quotas bit scarier: rape and slavery, which ought not to happen to anyone. Rape in these prisons is a serious and nearly unchecked problem. Prisoners are also forced to preform labor, producing goods that the prison can sell which is essentially slavery. It doesn't exactly fill me with optimism for the coming decades to see further development of an industry whose direct intent is to lock you behind bars with a bunch of people who will gladly rape you and then force you to be their slave. At least other industries do a little roleplaying.